Recreational facilities in mid-latitude climates may include an ice rink for winter sports such as hockey or curling, and may also include other facilities such as a swimming pool, concert hall or classrooms, dressing rooms, heated stands, showers, and so on. Up to now, ice making equipment has tended to be used to make ice, and the heat rejected in the ice making process may not necessarily have been used as advantageously as might otherwise have been possible or desirable. Arena ice making equipment has tended to be operated separately from building mechanical systems, rather than being fully integrated with them as proposed herein in a combined heating, air conditioning and refrigeration system. That being the case, in the view of the present inventors it may be advantageous to employ the rejected heat more effectively than previously. In that regard, the present inventors are of the view that it may be advantageous to employ the ice making apparatus as a heat pump to provide a source of heat for rejection, with an ice by-product that can be melted at a subsequent opportunity. That is, heating and cooling loads may not occur during the same time period, or may be unequally matched. Given that both heating and cooling loads may vary during the day, it may be advantageous to provide a large amount of rejected heat at one time of day, and a large amount of refrigeration at another. To that end the present inventors propose, as described herein, to provide an apparatus, and a method of using a thermal capacitance to address, in some measure, the timing mis-match that may occur between the heating and cooling loads.